QUNEITRA, Syrian Golan Heights— Trucks of every size were queued up for miles and some hadn’t budged in days. At the end of the line, drivers resigned to a long, hot ordeal set up camp waiting for inspections.

At the border checkpoint on the Beirut-Damascus highway, each industrial vehicle must be searched in compliance with UN Resolution 1701 to insure it isn’t smuggling missiles or weapons into Lebanon. Israel and the US repeatedly charge Syria with rearming Hezbollah, and if true it could provide a casus belli for the next Lebanon war.

I discussed the possibility of an attack with a retired Syrian Army General who had served as a Captain in the 1967 Six-Day War when the Israelis defeated the Syrians, and seized the Golan Heights. "I am afraid there will be more trouble here and in the middle east," he sighs.

And the fate of the Golan? "There is an Israeli military buildup now on the Golan Heights... and negotiating at the United Nations has never gotten the Arabs anything..."

In the Golan’s graveyard city of Quneitra, a town destroyed by Israel during the conflict, an eery sound whistles through the burnt skeletons of a hospital, a Christian church and a mosque. The main street feels haunted, with shop facades blown off, baring the insides of what may once have been a pharmacy, a bakery or a beauty parlor. Home after home is punched flat to the ground, one with trellised front gate still creaking in the wind.

Across a dirt road and a barbed wire fence is a minefield, and beyond that the green farms of Israel. This strategic plateau rises 500 yards above the Sea of Galilee, abutting the Jordan River Valley near the West Bank and the Lebanese Sheba’a Farms.

But the real strategic asset is water. The Golan is the catchment basin for the Sea of Galilee which provides 30% of Israel’s supply. In 2006, Israel began building its 20 Golan reservoir- the Quneitra Reservoir- just yards from the ruins of the town. "To be without water will be worse than any war," the Syrian General told me. "Millions could die. It is not land but water that will cause wars in the future."

On Israel’s Mount Hermon, which overlooks Quneitra and as far as Damascus, the preparations for such a war are well under way. Despite the heat, IDF soldiers are drilling in full combat gear and restocking military bases with equipment for the first time in over a decade. In the southern Negev desert, IDF commandos recently staged mock raids on a Syrian village.

Israeli intelligence predicts war within the next 24 months and security officials claim the army is on its highest alert since the Yom Kippur War of 1973. According to Israeli military expert Aaron Klein, the country’s top ministers held a "very sensitive" closed-door meeting on August 8 to finalize plans.

The Syrians too are getting ready, building so-called "pitas", a type of flat bunker that blends into the landscape, resembling unleavened bread. The Syrian government is purchasing advanced military hardware and anti-aircraft technology from Russia. Israel and the US also accuse China of supplying Syria with C-802 missiles- the same model used by Hezbollah to puncture an Israeli navy ship during last summer’s war.

Learning from history, the Syrians are training their own guerrilla teams to wage Hezbollah-style ambushes, with the help of up to 15,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards stationed in Syria.

Ironically, Great Britain, France and American-allied Arab states led by the US all urged Israel to attack Syria as an extension of the 2006 war on Hezbollah. Israel wisely refused. While these instigator allies live safely oceans away, Israel could be left vulnerable to constant future retaliation from contiguous nations inflamed by US war-making.

At the Syrian Consulate in New York, I spoke with Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Dr. Bashar Ja’afari about US policy, and Bush’s professed "Crusade for Democracy". Ja’afari warned that spillover from another war in the region would dangerously impact everyone. "We have to deal with this American elephant in the china shop... The midde east is a very fragile area."

Israelis themselves echo the view. On July 31, the Golan Peace With Syria movement headed by former Foreign Ministry Director General Alon Liel urged a resistant President Bush to allow peace negotiations with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. "For the past year we have heard voices that we have never heard before from Damascus... We believe such talks could remove the threat of missiles that are currently flowing from Iran into Syria by the thousands and may soon land on our heads," he told Yedioth Ahronoth.

But will Bush learn from history? At the foot of Mount Hermon overlooking both the Syrian and Israeli sides of the Golan Heights is an Ayyubid fortress, the Nimrod Castle, used to expel the Crusaders from Damascus in 1291. Crusaders who didn’t leave were beheaded, and their bones flogged..

The far-right in Ukraine are acting as the vanguard of a protest movement that is being reported as pro-democracy. The situation on the ground is not as simple as pro-EU and trade versus pro-Putin and Russian hegemony in the region.
When US Senator John McCain dined with Ukraine’s opposition leaders in December, he shared a table and later a stage with the leader of the extreme far-right Svoboda party Oleh Tyahnybok.
This is Oleh Tyahnybok, he has claimed a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" (...)

Your support here: http://www.peaceinsyria.org/support.php
We, the undersigned, who are part of an international civil society increasingly worried about the awful bloodshed of the Syrian people, are supporting a political initiative based on the results of a fact-finding mission which some of our colleagues undertook to Beirut and Damascus in September 2012. This initiative consists in calling for a delegation of highranking personalities and public figures to go to Syria in order to (...)

At first glance, the results of America’s 2012 election appear to be a triumph for social, racial, and economic justice and progress in the United States: California voters passed a proposition requiring the rich to shoulder their fair share of the tax burden; Two states, Colorado and Washington, legalized the recreational use of marijuana, while Massachusetts approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes; Washington and two other states, Maine and Maryland, legalized same-sex (...)

In a 2004 episode of Comedy Central’s animated series South Park, an election was held to determine whether the new mascot for the town’s elementary school would be a “giant douche” or a “turd sandwich.” Confronted with these two equally unpalatable choices, one child, Stan Marsh, refused to vote at all, which resulted in his ostracization and subsequent banishment from the town.
Although this satirical vulgarity was intended as a commentary on the two (...)

PART I
PART II
PART III
If there is one major inconsistency in life, it is that young people who know little more than family, friends and school are suddenly, at the age of eighteen, supposed to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, because of their limited life experiences, the illusions they have about certain occupations do not always comport to the realities.
I discovered this the first time I went to college. About a year into my studies, I (...)

PART I
PART II
PART IV
Disillusioned with the machinations of so-called “traditional” colleges, I became an adjunct instructor at several “for-profit” colleges.
Thanks largely to the power and pervasiveness of the Internet, “for-profit” colleges (hereinafter for-profits) have become a growing phenomenon in America. They have also been the subject of much political debate and the focus of a Frontline special entitled College Inc.
Unlike traditional (...)

PART I
PART III
PART IV
Several years ago, a young lady came into the college where I was teaching to inquire about a full-time instructor’s position in the sociology department. She was advised that only adjunct positions were available. Her response was, “No thanks. Once an adjunct, always an adjunct.”
Her words still echo in my mind.
Even as colleges and universities raise their tuition costs, they are relying more and more on adjunct instructors. Adjuncts are (...)

PART II
PART III
PART IV
When The Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution over two hundred years ago, Americans were blessed with many rights considered to be “fundamental.” One conspicuously missing, however, was the right to an education.
This was not surprising given the tenor of the times. America was primarily an agrarian culture, and education, especially higher education, was viewed as a privilege reserved for the children of the rich and (...)

If there is one universal question that haunts all human beings at some point in their lives, it is, “Why do we die?”
Death, after all, is the great illogic. It ultimately claims all, the rich and the poor, the mighty and the small, the good and the evil. Death also has the capability to make most human pursuits—such as the quest for wealth, fame and power—vacuous and fleeting.
Given this reality, I have often wondered why so many people are still willing to (...)

How much corruption can a “democracy” endure before it ceases to be a democracy?
If five venal, mendacious, duplicitous, amoral, biased and (dare I say it) satanic Supreme Court “justices”—John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy—have their way, America will soon find out.
In several previous articles for Pravda.Ru, I have consistently warned how the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision is one of the (...)

Imagine, if you will, that the United States government passes a law banning advertisers from sponsoring commercials on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show or Rupert Murdoch’s Fox (Faux) “News” Network.
On one hand, there would be two decided advantages to this ban: The National IQ would undoubtedly increase several percentage points, and manipulative pseudo-journalists would no longer be able to appeal to the basest instincts in human nature for ratings and profit while (...)

LIVE, from the State that brought you Senator Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin voters now proudly present, fresh from his recall election victory, Governor Scott Walker!
At first glance, it is almost unfathomable that anyone with a modicum of intelligence would have voted to retain Scott Walker as Wisconsin’s governor. This, after all, is a man who openly declared he is trying to destroy the rights of workers through a “divide and conquer” strategy; who received 61% of the (...)

A question I’ve frequently been asked since I began writing for Pravda.Ru in 2003 is, “Why did you become disillusioned with the practice of law?”
This question is understandable, particularly since, in most people’s minds, being an attorney is synonymous with wealth and political power.
I’ve always been reluctant to answer this question for fear it will discourage conscientious and ethical people from pursuing careers in the legal profession—a (...)